Many different factors can influence whether a driver engages with and is aware of driving tasks and environmental aspects relating to the operation of a vehicle. For example, a driver can choose to focus on various personal electronic devices (e.g., smartphone), infotainment integrated with the vehicle, interacting with passengers, viewing surrounding drivers/scenic views, and so on. Moreover, even when the driver attempts to actively engage with the driving tasks, vigilance decrement can cause the driver to experience a loss of vigilance as time progresses. Thus, ensuring vigilance of the driver and awareness about the surroundings of the vehicle can present many difficulties.
As a further matter, approaches that provide audible alerts to maintain vigilance and/or to inform the driver of risks can be interpreted as an annoyance by the driver instead of an effective manner of engaging the driver. Additionally, further approaches that require a driver to keep their hands on the steering wheel and/or to maintain their eyes forward-facing can also be ineffective since the driver may engage in the noted postures to simply satisfy the monitoring system while still daydreaming or focusing on other tasks. Consequently, the noted approaches can fail to achieve maintaining engagement by the driver.